By Diana Hefley Herald Writer
EVERETT — A Lynnwood woman told a Snohomish County judge on Thursday she will always regret bringing heroin to her childhood friend.
“I wish I would have said ‘no’ that day. She’d still be here,” Kimberly Hiscott said.
Superior Court Judge Linda Krese sentenced Hiscott to one year and eight months in prison — the maximum under state sentencing guidelines. Hiscott, 46, pleaded guilty in May to delivery of a controlled substance.
Her friend, 45, fatally overdosed April 14, 2011 on a combination of cocaine and morphine. Heroin metabolizes into morphine in the body.
Hiscott initially was arrested for investigation of controlled substance homicide. Prosecutors later charged her with delivering heroin.
She told Mountlake Terrace police that she brought heroin to her friend’s apartment and both of them smoked and injected the potent opiate before her friend quit breathing.
Hiscott reportedly told detectives her friend took two hits and she had one. They sat on the bed, watching television. Within several minutes her friend said she was tired and then fell off the corner of the bed, landing face down on the floor, according to court documents. Hiscott reportedly told detectives that she assumed this was normal behavior for her friend.
She said that her friend’s son arrived home about 20 minutes later. He knocked on the bedroom door to give his mom a prescription he’d picked up for her. He saw his mother on the floor. Hiscott told him that woman was fine so he closed the door. Moments later he heard Hiscott calling her friend’s name. He went into the room, rolled his mother over and noticed she wasn’t breathing. He began CPR under the direction of an emergency dispatcher.
Paramedics also tried to revive the woman but she died at the scene. Her mother and daughter attended Thursday’s hearing.
Krese called the woman’s death a tragic consequence of illegal drug use.
She noted that Hiscott had agreed to a high-end sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. The defendant could have faced a more serious charge, such as manslaughter or controlled substance homicide. Prosecutors, however, took into account that Hiscott wasn’t a drug dealer making a profit by providing her friend heroin. There also wasn’t any evidence to prove that Hiscott knew that her friend had taken cocaine before using heroin.
Krese said that given the facts of the case the lawyers had reached an appropriate resolution.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.
